


Morning on the Water

by leonidaslion



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 21:59:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's back from Hell, but the boys are having trouble putting Dis in the rearview mirror ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Morning on the Water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [splendidsilence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/splendidsilence/gifts).



> The prompt was "ringtone, card deck".

Sam came around in a lazy, slow way that was a little disorienting. Normally, he got an alarm going off in his face, or Dean slapping his foot or flicking his ear while crowing, _‘rise and shine, Princess!’_ Occasionally, he’d wake up hard and aching with Dean’s mouth on his cock, which was pretty damned nice but in no way either slow or lazy.

It took him almost a full minute of blinking at the plain wood wall in front of his face before he remembered where he was and what he was doing there. The pale, pine wall belonged to a fishing cabin in northern Vermont, which in turn belonged to a friend of Bobby’s. Sam and Dean were borrowing the place so that they could take a well-deserved and long-overdue break.

Their last hunt had been harder than usual—mostly on Dean, whose complete and utter inability to grasp the concept of self-preservation was enough to make Sam want to throttle him before anything else could. Watching Dean tossed into a massive oak tree like a rag doll had pretty much been the last straw, as far as Sam was concerned. He hadn’t so much lobbied for this vacation as he had insisted on it.

Dean wouldn’t even have agreed to a few days of down time if he hadn’t broken two ribs and bruised several more. Not to mention the concussion. Despite the severity of his injuries, it had taken almost a full day of being unable to move around for more than a couple of seconds at a time without going white with pain and breaking out into a sweat before he begrudgingly admitted that maybe heading after that ghost in Pittsburgh wasn’t such a great idea right now.

Sam had thought that his brother was pretty intense when his clock was ticking down, but pre-Hell Dean had nothing on the new version. At least Sam had understood where his brother was coming from before. It didn’t take a psychiatrist to recognize that Dean had been doing his best to fit as much living in as possible before the demons came to collect: was maybe trying to bury any thought of the future by focusing all of that larger-than-life personality on the Now of hunting and drinking and fucking.

Back then, Sam had been more than understanding, actually: he’d been _party_ to it. He’d helped Dean burrow inside of the present as best as he could, and when that wasn’t enough he took his brother out and pushed beer after beer on him until Dean was drunk enough to finally try for what he wanted—what they’d both wanted for some time.

And, although he had known that it was only going to make things harder afterwards, Sam had kissed back. He had let Dean strip him down and tumble them both into bed and didn’t waste a second mourning the boundaries that were torn beyond repair in the process.

It _had_ made things harder. Bad enough to have to give up his brother and comrade in arms: worse still to lose a Dean who had slept with his head pillowed on Sam’s shoulder. Who had spent an afternoon driving Sam crazy with his hands and his tongue and who parted his legs with a nudge from Sam’s knee and panted out the dirtiest, hottest things while Sam made him shake and come apart.

It had been _Hell_ , actually, having that Dean ripped away from him. Watching the man who had devoted the last three months of his life to declaring his love in as many ways as he possibly could without ever actually letting the words leave his mouth scream and bleed and finally die had left Sam bitter and raw. It had left wide, grey spaces inside of his chest, like the reaches of winter.

But maybe he wouldn’t have had the strength to force his way down after Dean, if he hadn’t been left so shattered. Maybe the love he felt for his brother wouldn’t have been strong enough to lead them back home if they hadn’t made that final, devastating fall from grace.

Over a year ago, that had been, and although Dean seemed like his old self again most of the time, there was still this unnerving urgency to him. Sam couldn’t get a handle on the nervous energy surging beneath his brother’s skin. The closest explanation he could come up with was the possibility that Dean was frightened: that Dean was maybe fucking _terrified_ that if they paused long enough to take a breath, he’d wake up and find himself back in chains, his skin held open by hooks while demons toyed with his insides.

Sam had been able to take his brother out of Hell, but it was starting to look as though he couldn't take Hell out of Dean in return.

As bad as knowing that Dean's thoughts were still cracked and burnt was, Sam couldn't shake the feeling that things were more serious than he suspected: that there were blackened, rotting wounds deep down inside of his brother that he couldn't see or touch. And whenever he sensed that he was close to finding one of those ruined places, Dean would turn off the lights in the room and move all the furniture on him.

Dealing with his brother these days was sort of like playing blackjack with a crooked dealer. Winning was impossible: Dean had replaced the familiar red and blue Bicycles with a tarot deck, and the only cards he ever dealt Sam were Devils and Towers. It meant something, but Dean wasn’t talking—God forbid they ever had an actual _conversation_ about what he’d been through: what he was still going through—and Sam was so fucking tired of reaching for his brother and having his fingers close on thin air.

He had been hoping that this forced vacation might help—that it might finally ease his brother's driven restlessness, if nothing else—but Dean had been sour and uneasy when they arrived last night, and Sam wasn’t foolishly optimistic enough to expect anything different this morning. Shifting up on his elbow, he looked blearily over toward his brother’s bed _(separate from his own these days, although there was sex more often than not and Dean hadn’t had a problem with sharing Before)_ , and found the covers thrown back and the bed empty.

Damn it.

With adrenaline flooding his body, Sam scrambled to his feet and headed for the bathroom. He half-expected to find his brother on the floor, pale and breathless with pain, but the bathroom was empty. So were the kitchen and the living room.

Sam was about half a second away from a full-blown panic attack when he spotted the note. It was scrawled on the back of a gas receipt that was lying on the kitchen table.

 

Couldn’t sleep. Got bored. Went out. Back in a bit.   
-D

P.S. I’m FINE, so stop freaking out.

 

Breathing heavily through his nose, Sam crumpled the note in one hand. Alternating waves of anger and concern swept through him, leaving him hot one moment and cold the next. His heartbeat was fast and obvious in his throat.

Dean was a fucking _moron_.

Sam spurred himself into motion, pausing only long enough to grab his phone before bolting out the front door. Drawing up short on the porch, he scanned the property.

The Impala was still parked at the end of the dirt road leading up to the cabin, which told him that ‘out’ meant ‘walk’ instead of ‘drive’. On the one hand, now he didn’t need to worry about Dean passing out and crashing into a tree. Then again, if Dean had taken the car at least he would have been sitting down instead of aggravating his injuries.

What bits of sky that Sam could see through the trees were a painfully vivid blue, which would have made him feel better about Dean being outside if it had been warmer. But it was late September and it couldn’t have been more than forty-five degrees in the shade of the porch. Standing there in nothing more than a worn pair of boxers, Sam’s skin was already pebbling and his feet were arching away from the cold floorboards of their own accord. He considered running back inside to throw on a shirt and some shoes, but that would waste precious minutes: minutes he couldn’t afford to throw away when Dean was out here injured and without a jacket—and yeah, Sam _knew_ his brother wasn’t wearing a jacket because his broken ribs hadn’t left him with enough mobility to put one on without help.

He was gonna kill Dean when he found him.

After giving the surrounding wilderness a final, sweeping glance and finding no trace of his brother, Sam speed dialed Dean on his cell _(Dean would have taken his own, of course: neither of them went anywhere without them these days)_ and then held the phone up to his ear, waiting. He _kept_ waiting while it rang six times before cycling over to voicemail and then hung up, swearing.

“Dean!” he shouted, taking a step off the porch. The sparse grass, still slightly stiff and wet from the night air here beneath the overarching trees, was an even colder shock against his feet than the porch had been. Sam didn’t really notice, though. Too much of his attention was caught up in the way that his shout was echoing back to him, alone and unanswered.

Images of Dean lying unconscious somewhere in the woods flashed through Sam’s mind as he ran a hand through his hair. There was mile upon mile of wilderness out here, all of the other cabins in the vicinity were currently empty, and Dean wasn’t answering his phone. He was hurt—no concussion anymore, but ribs still fucked to hell—and he could be _anywhere_.

“No,” Sam muttered. A muscle in his cheek jumped agitatedly. “He’s in pain, he didn’t go far. Just _think_ , asshole.”

Just like that, he realized there was really only one place around here Dean _could_ have gone without fighting his way through the hated woods to do it: only one path he would have taken. Sam sprinted toward that path without another moment’s hesitation, hardly feeling the rough ground beneath his feet. The trail leading to the lake wasn’t very wide, but it was clearly marked by the blue blazes on the trees and well maintained, and Sam didn’t need to think twice as he followed it.

As he stampeded over rocks and stray branches, he punched Dean’s number into the phone again. This time, though, he wasn’t listening to the other end of the line, but rather to the mid-morning stillness around him: listening for his brother’s ringtone. And there it was, off to the right where Sam had just begun to catch slivers of water through the trees: Metallica blaring unexpected and tinny into the quiet.

He exploded out from the path just in time to see Dean flip his phone open and mutter, “Dude, I’m fine,” into the mouthpiece.

His brother was lying in the lone strip of sun on the lake’s fringe, about three inches away from falling in. He looked oddly fragile in the light with his pale skin and his hair sticking up all over the place. He was barefoot, Sam noticed: his soles stained green from the grass around the cabin, or maybe from the patch of vegetation he was lying in now. Dean’s feet and his head were the only things that Sam could see, actually, because his brother was bundled up in one of the heavy blankets they’d found in the cabin last night. It was such an odd mixture of care and contempt for his own health that Sam’s first impulse was to laugh.

Then he remembered how terrified he’d been to wake up and find Dean gone and the urge passed.

“You _asshole_ ,” he barked.

He was tempted to chuck his phone at his brother, but then Dean jumped, startled, and hissed in pain at the sudden movement. Sam’s anger didn’t _evaporate_ exactly—he could feel it lurking just out of sight—but it was momentarily overwhelmed by a surge of concern. Striding forward, he dropped down next to his brother and reached for the blanket.

“Let me see.”

“I’m fine,” Dean said again, but he didn’t fight when Sam pushed open the blanket and slid an assessing hand along the line of his torso. There was the expected swelling—worse than when Sam checked it last night, which wasn’t surprising when he considered his brother's early morning stroll—but Dean's body was warm through the soft fabric of the t-shirt. A small knot low in Sam’s chest loosened.

“Why didn’t you answer your phone when I called before?” he demanded, moving one hand up underneath Dean’s shirt to make sure the bandages keeping Dean's ribs in place were still tightly wound.

“Fell asleep,” Dean grunted, and then grimaced. “Fuck, your hands are cold.”

“They wouldn’t be if you’d stayed in bed like you were supposed to,” Sam pointed out. His anger had begun to fade, though. It was difficult to stay angry with Dean peering up at him with sleep-befuddled eyes and looking more relaxed and like himself than he had since Sam got him back.

“Left you a note,” Dean said and, while Sam was still searching for a suitable response, lifted one hand and encircled Sam’s left wrist with his fingers. “C’mere,” he urged with a feeble tug.

Dean only ever initiated physical contact for two reasons, and since Sam wasn’t injured right now, he was pretty sure he knew what his brother wanted. And as much as he loved the feel of Dean surrendering to him, of Dean’s body yielding and letting him in, this really wasn’t the time.

Weak as his brother was right now, it wasn’t difficult to resist Dean’s attempt to bring him closer, and after a moment Dean’s forehead furrowed with annoyance.

“Come on, Sam,” he insisted, not meeting Sam’s eyes as he tugged on his hand again.

“No,” Sam told him. “We aren’t doing anything until your ribs are better. And you can't keep using sex as a diversionary tactic anyway. It isn't healthy, man."

Dean’s snort was contemptuous, but his cheeks burned with a faint rush of color. He looked almost … embarrassed?

“I don’t want to fuck, asshole,” he grumbled, moving his fingers against Sam’s wrist. “Just—just do this for me, okay?”

It was the closest Dean ever came to begging when Sam’s dick wasn’t in his ass and, although he still had no clue what was going on here, Sam didn’t really have the strength to say no. Muscles tense with apprehension and certain that this was going to end with Dean in even more pain than he was already, he let Dean draw him down. Sure enough, Dean went white as he tried to maneuver Sam where he wanted him. His mouth pulled tight and thin.

Words trembled on Sam’s lips— _okay, that’s it, we’re going back in; what the fuck are you trying to do; let me help you, please, Dean, please_ —but he recognized the determination in his brother’s eyes and kept his mouth shut. Tried not to flinch at the muffled, hurt noises Dean made as he pushed and pulled at Sam’s body.

Eventually, Sam ended up on his side right up against the edge of the bank. Dean was a warm presence behind him. If his brother had been feeling better, Sam would have been worried about Dean's sense of humor. It would only take one hard push to tumble him over the edge into the frigid water, from which he would resurface, spluttering and gasping, to the sound of laughter.

Instead Dean pulled the blanket closed around both of them and carefully edged nearer. His arm came forward to rest on Sam’s waist, fingers curling against Sam’s stomach, and his forehead dropped down to rest at the nape of Sam’s neck. His shallow, pained breaths brushed his lips between Sam’s shoulder blades.

 _Oh_ , Sam thought stupidly.

His chest tightened for a moment—a bone deep, heavy ache—and then loosened again. The ache lingered, not unpleasant, and his stomach fluttered nervously. He’d wanted this for so long: wanted more than those brief moments after sex when Dean was too exhausted to move away and too out of it to realize what he was doing.

Now that he was actually getting it, though, Sam didn’t know what to do with himself.

“You know this counts as cuddling, right?” he said, and then immediately cursed himself. Now Dean was going to pull away and close off again.

But his brother only tensed his arm as if he were afraid _Sam_ was going to pull away. When Sam remained motionless, Dean's hold relented and he muttered, “You were running around naked, moron. No way am I letting you catch pneumonia or something. You’re an annoying bitch when you get sick.” The words were as rough as ever, but Dean's voice was soft and his fingers moved lazily against Sam’s stomach: stroking.

Oh God, this was horrible. It was fucking _agonizing_ because any moment now Dean would realize what he was doing and then he’d stop and Sam didn’t think he’d be able to stand that. Not now that the relentless urgency had finally loosened its grip. Not now that Dean was holding him like he was some precious, loved thing—like Dean _needed_ him—and Sam knew Dean loved him, he did, but this was different than knowing. This was sinking into that feeling, was being enveloped by it, and it was so achingly wonderful that Sam’s muscles were knotting up with the effort of holding still and not breaking the moment.

He could feel the pain relaxing its hold on his brother in the way that Dean's breathing eased: Dean's chest rising and falling with a slower, deeper rhythm against his back. Dean’s arm was heavy and lax where it was draped over his side. Dean’s body heat, trapped by the blanket, soaked into him.

It was everything Sam thought he could never have again, and it felt as tenuous and fragile as a butterfly's wing. He was going to tear it, he was going to get that shimmery powder all over his fingers as he ripped it to shreds, he was—

“Dude, relax,” Dean said, his voice familiar and warm.

“I am relaxed,” Sam lied.

Dean huffed a moist, disbelieving breath between Sam’s shoulder blades but didn’t say anything.

On the lake, a flock of Canadian geese drifted in their direction. Other, unseen birds were calling from the woods bordering the opposite shore. Even in the mountain shade, the trees there were an autumnal shock of crimson and goldenrod and ginger. The lake itself was still mostly in shadow, with the exception of their own small patch of sunlight, but the sun itself was rising, and in less than an hour the reflection of light off the water would be blinding.

Sam saw all of that and none of it. His attention was too focused behind him.

After a few minutes, Dean’s hand slid higher and came to rest over Sam’s heart. He took a ponderous breath and then said, awkwardly, “I know I’ve been—I’m not easy. To be around, I mean. And I get that you’re worried. But I’m not good at. I don’t.” He stopped, made a frustrated little grunt, and then admitted, “I don’t know how to talk to you.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Sam told him. His heart was beating too quickly against Dean’s palm and he was struck by the sudden, ridiculous thought that Dean’s hand was the only thing keeping it from smashing through his ribcage and leaping out into the water the way it wanted to.

“Not out loud, maybe, but you—Christ, Sam, sometimes you look at me like I’m—like you think I’m some kind of—I don’t know, like I’m—I’m—”

Dean was floundering around, either intentionally or because he honestly didn’t know how to put it into words, and Sam knew that if he just kept his mouth shut his brother would get frustrated and drop it. Part of him wished that Dean _would_ drop it because as much as he wanted to get everything out into the open, talking was wrong, it wasn’t something they did, and anyway he was petrified of whatever Dean was trying to say.

What if he told Sam that things were fucked, that they were never going to be any different, that he wasn’t okay and wasn’t going to be? What the hell was Sam supposed to do then?

But in the end, Sam's need to know what was going on with his brother outweighed his fear.

“Broken,” he supplied, and his voice cracked a little on the word. It sounded girlish and overly dramatic, saying it out loud like that, but Dean didn’t laugh. For a long moment, he didn’t respond at all. If his thumb weren't absently stroking Sam’s skin, Sam would have thought that his brother had fallen asleep.

When Dean finally spoke, his voice was a little rough, but otherwise normal. “I’m not, Sam. I mean, I’m not great, yeah, but I’m not. Not that.” He paused and then added, “I’m getting better, okay? You just—you gotta give me some time, man.”

Dean's lies were always glossy and well-polished: rolled off his tongue like Metallica lyrics. These words were anything but: stilted and stiff and _true_.

Some vast, cresting wave of dread inside of Sam collapsed in on itself. His body went pliant all at once, muscles slack and tingling with it. He realized that he was crying: all that fear vanished at once and it was too much, his relief so clear and strong that it was painful. He wished that he could wipe his cheeks without Dean noticing. As if Dean didn’t already know what he was doing.

“Okay,” he whispered, hoping that Dean wouldn't tease him about the crying thing right now. Not when he still felt so raw inside.

“Great,” Dean said instantly. “Now can we never have this conversation again?”

The words were tossed out casually, but his thumb moved in new patterns on Sam's chest: offering the comfort and reassurance that Dean couldn't quite bring himself to vocalize.

“Yeah,” Sam choked out, crying a little harder.

He had done this so many times over the last few years, using up a lifetime's supply of tears and then some, but these were different—healing instead of hurtful—and with Dean curled around him, Sam welcomed the release gratefully. Dean didn't say anything while Sam wept, but he didn't pull away either, and after a few awkward, hiss-inducing movements on his part, he actually managed to get his other arm underneath Sam's body so that he could hold him closer.

Eventually, Sam quieted again. The breeze coming off the lake moved past, ruffling his hair and drying his tears. The mountain air smelled clean and vibrant and alive.

Taking a shaky breath, Sam laid one of his hands over Dean's and felt his own heartbeat mirrored through his brother’s flesh. Then, because he needed to and because he sensed that Dean would let him get away with it right now, he murmured, “I love you, you know. I love you so much it scares the shit out of me sometimes.”

“Course you love me,” Dean said lightly, "I'm awesome." But his thumb tapped against Sam’s chest and Dad’s Morse code lessons weren’t so distant that Sam didn’t get the message:

 _Love you more, bitch._

He smiled wide enough that his mouth ached with it and said, “Jerk,” and Dean huffed a quiet laugh.

They fell silent again, Dean moving their entwined hands back down to Sam’s stomach so that he could trace idle patterns there. He was humming under his breath, tunelessly enough that Sam couldn’t recognize the song, and dropping kisses on Sam’s shoulders every once in a while.

As the sun rose high enough to paint the surface of the lake with gold fire, Sam sank deeper into his brother’s embrace. He let his eyes fall shut, and there was still light everywhere: tinged red against the back of his eyelids and warm on his skin.

"Damn it," Dean muttered abruptly.

"What's wrong?" Sam asked, not really concerned. His brother had sounded more annoyed than anything else.

"I just realized that getting up is gonna hurt like hell."

Sam snorted. "Should've thought of that before you decided now was a good time for a walkabout."

"A whosit?"

“A walkabout. It’s this traditional—you know what, nevermind. Just—” He stroked the back of his brother's hand. "Can we just—"

 _This,_ he thought but didn't say. _I want more of this._

"Yeah," Dean breathed, hearing him loud and clear. He eased one leg carefully between Sam's and pushed even closer. After nuzzling briefly at the back of Sam’s neck, he buried his face in Sam’s hair. "Yeah, okay."


End file.
